Theatre Review: The Art of Concealment (Jermyn Street Theatre)

Last year, as part of its season to celebrate Terence Rattigan’s centenary, Chichester Festival Theatre staged Nicholas Wright’s Rattigan’s Nijinsky, a new play that combined scenes from a never-produced Rattigan screenplay with a biodrama focusing on the playwright’s later life. The result was a somewhat awkward hybrid that flitted unsatisfactorily between the two narrative strands, precluding full involvement in either.

Rattigan-as-protagonist now returns in Giles Cole's The Art of Concealment, a play that was originally commissioned for last summer’s Brighton Festival Fringe and which now takes up residence at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Drawing upon the two major Rattigan biographies by Geoffrey Wansell and Michael Darlow, Cole’s play is a more satisfying and insightful piece of work than was Wright’s, fashioning what is in essence a memory play from the details of Rattigan’s life. The action begins on the eve of the opening of Cause Célèbre in 1977 and finds the ailing, elderly Rattigan reflecting upon the direction of his life, his relationships with his parents and his lovers, and his painful fall from critical and commercial favour.

Although the flashback structure, and the device of having Rattigan act as a commentator on his own experiences, results in some clumsy moments of excessive editorialising, the material feels more elegantly worked than in Wright’s play, and Knight Mantell’s tightly-controlled production holds the interest. As its title indicates, the play zeroes in on the notion of “concealment” as it applies both to Rattigan’s personal and professional life. “Concealment” is indeed a word that forms a refrain in the Darlow text, the biographer summarising Rattigan, finally, as “a man whose life had been devoted to forms of concealment and role-playing.” Given Rattigan’s reticence there is at times an uncomfortable suggestion of invaded privacy about the enterprise, as well as the feeling that the play may to some extent perpetuate a sentimentalised image of the playwright as a victim - of English sexual intolerance on the one hand and of the Royal Court revolution on the other.

The spelling-it-out obviousness of some moments here also suggests that the play has less to offer those already familiar with the facts of Rattigan’s life. But what the production does offer that the biographies don’t is the pleasure of performance. Dominic Tighe brings his customary grace and matinee-idol appeal to the younger Rattigan (what a great Freddie Page in The Deep Blue Sea he’d make!), skillfully presenting the protagonist as a man of both kindness and coldness. Even at his liveliest - when entertaining his chums with a Gielgud impersonation, say - Tighe keeps a tantalising aura of guardedness about him, that of a man who learnt early on to compartmentalise his life because “one has to be so careful about the things one reveals.” As the older Rattigan, Alistair Findlay is stuck with the play’s clunkier dialogue (“A Taste of Honey! To me it was a slap in the face!”). But the performance deepens in the later stages when he becomes a participant rather than a commentator on the drama.

Graham Pountney does amusing work as Rattigan’s philandering, philistine father Frank and in the (invented) role of Freddie Gilmour, a queeny director with a neat line in put-downs, while Judy Buxton is touching and vivid as Rattigan’s mother Vera who’s more generously portrayed here than she was in Rattigan’s Nijinsky. Buxton also gets a good late scene as “Aunt Edna” - the archetypal theatregoer evoked by Rattigan in his Prefaces - who here appears to confront the playwright about the ways in which he may have underestimated his audience. And there’s well-judged support from Daniel Bayle as Kenneth Morgan, and from Charlie Holloway as Michael Franklin, the volatile young man dismissed by Rattigan’s friends as a chancer but who ended up staying with Rattigan until the end of the latter’s life.

What Cole’s play doesn’t quite do justice to, perhaps, is the function that Rattigan’s emphasis on discretion - his mastery of the art of concealment, as it were - served for him as a dramatist. The abiding fascination with falsity and its revelation is part of the extraordinary tension that Rattigan’s best work can still generate in a theatre, an emotional charge that Cole’s play, for all its engaging moments, doesn’t manage to match.

The production runs for 2 hours 15 minutes and is booking until 28th January.

Reviewed for The Public Reviews.

Propeller Revisited: Richard III & The Comedy of Errors (Hampstead Theatre)

Writing about Propeller’s effervescent production of The Comedy of Errors earlier this year [review here], I reflected that the quick-fire inventiveness, energy and allusiveness of the company’s productions make it pretty much a requirement to see them more than once. Happily, that opportunity recently arose, as the company’s  tour of Comedy and Richard III [review here] has now reached Hampstead Theatre where the productions run until July 9th.

Delighted as I was to have the chance to experience both shows again, it must be acknowledged that there’s a certain amount of risk involved in seeing especially beloved productions for a second time. Will the shows have run out of steam? Will I, as an audience member, be as responsive? And most simply and most pressingly: Will it be as good as I remember it?

Happy to report that Ed Hall’s productions more than passed the test, having lost not an ounce of their freshness and exuberance in the intervening months. If anything, the shows felt richer than before, more deeply embedded, more confident and assured, and while a couple of the big surprise elements (both dramatic and comedic) couldn’t quite match the impact of the first viewing, the overall response was sheer unmitigated delight. Richard III seemed darker than before, with Richard Clothier’s Richard even wittier and more deadly, and the Theatre of Blood-esque murders more outrageous than I remembered them.

And The Comedy of Errors remains the feel-good show of the year for me - a riotous, cartoonish take on the play that’s still capable of moving into genuine emotion and tenderness in its final moments of reconciliation. Moreover, seeing the productions within just a couple of days of each other (rather than a couple of months, as previously) made the versatility, vitality and sheer damned brilliance of the ensemble even more apparent.

A small selection of (many, many) favourite moments and touches. From Richard III: the Princes in the Tower - angelic puppets here - clinging to the skirts of Dominic Tighe’s magnificent Queen Elizabeth; Tony Bell’s Margaret sprinkling blood from a bowl as she curses those who have wronged her and recalls Yorkist crimes; Dugald Bruce-Lockhart’s prim Richard Ratcliff checking his time-piece as body bags arrive; the Eve-of-Bosworth nightmare, with Chris Myles’s Buckingham clutching his entrails; Wayne Cater’s bizarre appearance as Tyrell, and the sudden shock of Richard’s death. And from Comedy: the freeze-frame device; David Newman’s devilish coquette Luciana unleashing her Mace spray and mean martial-arts moves; Myles’s whip-wielding, lavender-booted abbess arriving to a snatch of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven (Is A Place on Earth)”; Richard Frame’s Dromio offering his epic discourse on Nell the Kitchen Wench; Sam Swainsbury’s Antipholus of E scaling heights of comic desperation as he recounts the crazy plot; and Kelsey Brookfield’s wily bunny-girl hostess bouncing in (“Awight?”). And, yes, Tony Bell’s barn-storming appearance as the dirty-minded evangelist Dr. Pinch (“He was saved!”) is still the most outrageously enjoyable set-piece I’ve seen in a theatre  this year. Then there are the cheeky ad-libs and lovely bits of audience interaction, and what a treat to see and hear (and singalong with) the gang’s 80s-pop-hits medley in its entirety this time around during the interval - it’s almost worth the price of admission alone.

At once cutting-edge and timeless, intensely physical yet respectful of the language, Propeller’s vibrant, risky approach has again resulted in two totally contrasting yet marvellously complementary theatre experiences that are thrilling and immersive - and tremendous fun. Pure pleasure from start to finish, this irresistible pairing makes most other Shakespeare productions seem altogether too tame and civilised by comparison. Roll on the company’s Henry V and The Winter’s Tale, which will premiere later this year.

Further information on final tour dates and venues here.

Review: Propeller's The Comedy of Errors (Sheffield Lyceum; & touring)

With their take on The Comedy of Errors, Ed Hall’s Propeller have crafted yet another blissfully enjoyable production, one that blows the dust right off of one of Shakespeare’s earliest (and, some would say, creakiest) comedies and proves a more than worthy companion to the company’s startling Richard III. Despite its equivocal reputation within Shakespeare’s canon, The Comedy of Errors seems to have remained surprisingly popular with audiences, with several major stagings in the last ten years (including a rap version!) and a new production just announced for the National Theatre this Christmas. It will have to go some way to top this one, though. For those underwhelmed by Peter Hall’s bland Twelfth Night at the National Theatre Hall Jnr provides the antidote: a breathtakingly inventive, energetic and hilarious production that makes a flawed play shine like a masterpiece.

Like Twelfth Night, the Plautus-derived plot of The Comedy of Errors revolves around twins separated by shipwreck: two sets, in this case, Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse, and their servants, both called Dromio, who wind up in Ephesus on the very same day as the Antipholus’s father, Egeon. Comic complications ensue, not least for Antipholus of E’s wife Adriana and her sister Luciana, who react in rather surprising ways to the odd behaviour of the man they believe to be their husband and brother-in-law.

Unsurprisingly, the innate silliness of the plot is embraced with wholehearted, hog-wild enthusiasm here. Where the ambience of the company’s Richard III was black and steely, suggestive of asylum and morgue, this time Michael Pavelka’s set and Ben Omerod’s lighting evoke nothing so much as a delightfully tacky package holiday resort, complete with fairy lights and graffiti, and mariachi music provided by a marvellously stoned-looking sombrero-sporting Chorus. Richard III’s violence was staged with gory Theatre of Blood-esque bravura; here the many beatings are presented as cartoonish slapstick, supplemented with comic sound effects. Snatches of pop songs (from “The Girl From Ipanema” to “Like A Prayer” to “Gold”) are judiciously - and sparingly - employed, and the company has great fun with some of the devices of Shakespearean comedy. When a character delivers an aside, for example, he steps out of the scene, leaving the rest of the action effectively “freeze-framed” (usually with the actors in the most ungainly positions possible). Speech delivered, the character then returns to his place to pick up the scene from where he left it.

Perfectly honed moments such as these exemplify the skill of this ensemble which is, as ever, beyond praise. The actors work together with consummate ease and expertise. Every character - no matter how minor - is vividly realised, and each performance is a gem, from Dugald Bruce-Lockhart and Sam Swainsbury as the Antipholi and Richard Frame and Jon Trenchard as the Dromios to Wayne Cater’s merchant Balthasar, Chris Myles’s whip-wielding, lavender-booted Abbess, and Kelsey Brookfield’s canny bunny girl courtesan, whose sensational cleavage catches the roving eye of Richard Clothier’s Duke. I think I laughed the hardest at David Newman’s Luciana - a coquette with a hip-flask and some mean martial-arts moves - and at Dominic Tighe’s fabulously accented (and frequently tumescent) Officer, who seldom succeeds in keeping the peace. Robert Hands puts on a superb display as Adriana, all the while giving a marvellous emotional truth to a character who’s often just presented as a shrew or a scold. And John Dougall’s Egeon is a singularly moving presence; the performance nicely complements his understated Clarence in Richard III, and the actor really makes you feel the weight of the character’s long, weary search for his lost family.

Throughout, the big set-piece scenes are orchestrated with sometimes jaw-dropping invention and aplomb, from Frame’s delivery of Dromio’s discourse on Nell the kitchen wench to Swainsbury’s late recapitulation of the plot, a priceless moment in which the production turns around to comment on some of its own strategies. And I can’t imagine seeing a more wildly enjoyable sequence this year than the production’s outrageous, tour-de-force take on the “exorcism” scene, in which Tony Bell’s conjourer Dr. Pinch - who’s re-imagined here as a dirty-minded tele-evangelist (think Robert Duvall in The Apostle crossed with Sir Les Patterson) - leads the company in a rousing chorus of “He Was Saved!” (Then there’s Bell’s exit scene, which I won’t spoil for you, except to say that it involves a very strategically placed sparkler.)

Propeller’s irreverent cheek and pick-and-mix approach never becomes tiresome because it’s tied, at base, to traditional values: care with verse-speaking, clarity of story-telling. And they never labour a conceit. Hall’s command of pace and rhythm is such that the production can move from the riotous to the reflective with ease. (Against all odds, the final reunions here carry much more emotional weight than those in the current NT Twelfth Night.) The company’s generous, inclusive spirit of play is infectious (the actors even provide musical entertainment during the interval), and, like Richard III, the production teems with so many great ideas and details that it practically demands to be seen more than once. This is a total theatre experience, and delightful in every department. Do not miss.

The production runs for 2 hours 20 minutes. It tours internationally, along with Richard III, until July. Newcastle next week; full details here.